Abstract

Given two n-bit (cyclic) binary strings, A and B,
represented on a circle (necklace instances). Let each sequence
have the same number k of 1's. We are interested in computing
the cyclic swap distance between A and B, i.e., the
minimum number of swaps needed to convert A to B, minimized
over all rotations of B. We show that this distance may be
computed in O(k^2).